Back-to-work pressure DOES hit family life

The social revolution that encourages more women to go to work is putting intolerable strain on family life, the Government's sex equality advisers admitted.

The warning, from the Equal Opportunities Commission, results from a poll that showed more than eight out of ten people think it is hard for parents to manage both work and raising children.

It also said that seven out of ten think it is going to get harder.

The findings follow years of pressure from ministers, urged on by the EOC, for mothers to leave young children in day care and return to work.

More than half of women with children under five currently hold down jobs and in 2003 Patricia Hewitt, now Health Secretary, went so far as to publish a paper which described mothers of young children who decline to work as a 'problem'.

Benefits and regulations have been skewed to help working mothers while those who stay at home have been stripped of tax breaks such as Married Couples Allowance.

EOC chief Jenny Watson insisted the answers were for the state and businesses to provide more flexible working and childcare and for more men to stay home with children.

Critics urged parents to be given more choice and that mothers who want to stay at home to bring up their own children should be given a greater chance to do so.

The EOC poll, taken by ICM Research among more than 2,000 people, found 82 per cent say it is difficult for parents to balance work and home life, and that 72 per cent say it will get harder in ten years.

Nearly two thirds, 64 per cent, said finding time for family and relationships was their biggest daily concern, ahead of money, work or health.

Around seven out of ten thought that the traditional model of male breadwinner and female homemaker is in the past while six out of ten think employers should change their practices to suit families.

Miss Watson blamed work patterns for 'putting Britain's families under the continued pressure our polling demonstrates, a pressure that will damage both our social health and our economic wealth.'

She said a social revolution was under way and that without more change 'family and community life' would break down.

Families were based on fathers looking after children, step-families and homosexual civil partnerships and Miss Watson added: 'It is the relationships that are important, not the form that they take.

'People have fears about the future and about the fact that they think it will be hard to find time for the relationships that matter.

'Those relationships are the things that make it possible for us to build strong families, sustain strong families and face the future with confidence.'

The EOC chief, who lives with human rights activist and former Liberty pressure group chief Andrew Puddephatt, has no children of her own.

Sociologist and author Patricia Morgan said: 'It is astonishing that the EOC is still banging on about mothers going to work and putting their children into daycare.

'Their survey is another example of evidence that shows mothers of young children do not want to work.

'They want to go back when their children are older. But nobody gets that chance, unless they are single mothers on benefit.'

State benefits, including tax credits, are mainly directed at working mothers. Those who give up work are squeezed between high living costs and a lack of state help. The last benefit to help many was Married Couples Allowance, which was abolished by Labour.

The Government has ignored calls for women to be given a choice by a transferable tax allowance system which would permit a stay-at-home mother to switch her income tax allowance to her partner.

Campaigners say the pay gap between men and women is 17 per cent, although the gap has narrowed greatly since the early 1970s when women earned just 64 per cent of average male earnings.

In 2005, average hourly pay rose by 2.5 per cent for men and 3.9 per cent for women.